Due to this, we've been quite busy the past two weeks!
1. We met the director of Estate Management, Michael Bienias. This is the equivalent of meeting Facilities Services Vice Chancellor Ed Denton. Director Bienias asked us how we're enjoying Cambridge (which we said we were enjoying a lot!) as well as some detailed questions about what we've been working on. We thanked him for making this program possible and took a picture (below)!
Left to right: Wei hong Tan, Michael Bienias, Irene Seliverstov
2. We also presented our findings to a handful of senior managers and the three Santander students.
Wei hong presented on the large amount of data about campus buildings' electricity and gas consumption which he had combed through and analyzed. Cambridge has meters which feed directly into an online program which generates graphs and figures. A most interesting finding was that in laboratory-dominated buildings, the baseline load is high even in the middle of the night and weekends. During typical work hours, there is an increase in energy consumption, but it is not as significant as the constant energy consumption when the building is relatively not in use. Additionally, there is no significant difference in energy consumption between term months and off-term months. That is, in July, when one would expect there to be fewer building occupants, the energy usage remains high due to the year-round high level of research activity.
For the air travel study, I analyzed roughly 5000 flights taken by University staff and students in order to calculate actual (versus theoretical) air travel emissions in the Carbon Management Plan. By looking at flights recorded by the insurance office and travel agents, we estimate that we've captured 75% of all flights, which is quite good. The 'missing' 25% we assume is when people book flights on their own and don't take out insurance. Therefore, it appears that air travel emissions could be calculated using solely insurance information with an uplift factor to account for travel agent data and “unaccounted for” flights. To calculate emissions we decided to use the ClimateCare online calculator. A productive future goal, I believe, would be to consolidate emission factors across reporting entities as they vary quite a bit . By far, the majority of flights are between European countries, but the majority of CO2 emissions come from flights to America.
Wei hong presented on the large amount of data about campus buildings' electricity and gas consumption which he had combed through and analyzed. Cambridge has meters which feed directly into an online program which generates graphs and figures. A most interesting finding was that in laboratory-dominated buildings, the baseline load is high even in the middle of the night and weekends. During typical work hours, there is an increase in energy consumption, but it is not as significant as the constant energy consumption when the building is relatively not in use. Additionally, there is no significant difference in energy consumption between term months and off-term months. That is, in July, when one would expect there to be fewer building occupants, the energy usage remains high due to the year-round high level of research activity.
For the air travel study, I analyzed roughly 5000 flights taken by University staff and students in order to calculate actual (versus theoretical) air travel emissions in the Carbon Management Plan. By looking at flights recorded by the insurance office and travel agents, we estimate that we've captured 75% of all flights, which is quite good. The 'missing' 25% we assume is when people book flights on their own and don't take out insurance. Therefore, it appears that air travel emissions could be calculated using solely insurance information with an uplift factor to account for travel agent data and “unaccounted for” flights. To calculate emissions we decided to use the ClimateCare online calculator. A productive future goal, I believe, would be to consolidate emission factors across reporting entities as they vary quite a bit . By far, the majority of flights are between European countries, but the majority of CO2 emissions come from flights to America.
From left to right:
Emilia (Santander), Paul Hasley (Energy Manager), Wei hong, Martin Whiteland (Environmental officer), Thomas (Santander), Chloe (Santander) and Irene (me).
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